


Dream Lover

by FleetSparrow



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: It's the Real Doll one, M/M, gdi Bruce you're creepy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-17
Updated: 2013-12-17
Packaged: 2018-01-05 00:16:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1087333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FleetSparrow/pseuds/FleetSparrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If a dream really is a wish your heart makes, then Bruce's heart could stand to be a little more open with him about exactly who the subject of his dreams is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dream Lover

It came to him in a dream. As if that wasn’t the most disgustingly cliché thing ever, but it was true. For the past week, every night Bruce had been seeing the same man. The dreams weren’t always the same, but _he_ was.

The first night had been plain, a typical “stuck in my office, but not my office” dream. The young man was supposedly Bruce’s secretary, but Bruce knew he wasn’t Alex, no matter which way zie was presenting that day. The face wasn’t right.

The second night, Bruce dreamed he was at one of the old Wayne galas, running through the hedge maze that used to go through the gardens, chasing after someone. He couldn’t remember exactly who he thought he was chasing, now, but he definitely remembered who he actually was chasing. It just would be a lot easier if Bruce knew who the hell the man was.

The third night, Bruce found himself in a circus, standing up on a platform under the big top. Even though the audience area was dark, he knew that everyone was out there watching him, waiting for him to do something. On the other side of the ring was the young man, waving and calling to him. Bruce took a step toward the edge and held out his arms for a rope. Suddenly, the young man was beside him, laughing, and pushed him off.

The fourth night, Bruce took a sleeping pill.

Bruce didn’t know if the next night’s dream had much of a plot other than the mystery man being all over him, kissing him, riding him. As satisfying as the dream had been, Bruce had woken up more disgruntled than ever.

It was said that the mind can’t invent a face in dreams, that anyone in seen in a dream is someone the dreamer has met before. If that was the case, then Bruce hated his memory for consciously forgetting such a face. And over the next few weeks, Bruce became more and more obsessed with that face.

Bruce had no artistic talent by any means, and by his own admission, but he knew a lot of people who did that he could pay. He hired three artists to draw the face he described, and a fourth to compile those together to get as close to the man’s true face as they could. Then, he sent the picture to every agency he could find to search for the man whatever data bank they had, but every one turned up nothing. Sure, some of the photos were close, but Bruce could tell instantly that they weren’t _him_. Undaunted, Bruce launched his own search for the mystery man.

Meanwhile, as Bruce commissioned more art of the young man, he began to meet with a psychic to analyze his dreams. The last dream was clear enough, desire for the young man himself, and the desire for the man to reciprocate Bruce’s feelings even more passionately. The chase in the maze was a representation of Bruce’s mind, desperately trying to find this man even as he eludes him once again. The office dream meant that the mysterious man most likely was someone Bruce saw often, in a setting where Bruce also saw hundreds of other people. That he was Bruce’s secretary suggested that he could be someone close to Bruce, or who passed him often enough to seem close. The circus dream, that was the terror of actually getting what he wanted, of finding the young man and having him not live up to Bruce’s expectations. The only solution, she told Bruce, was to focus on dreaming about the young man.

That proved to be more difficult than it sounded. After having nothing but dreams about him, the young man simply stopped showing up. Bruce even did his best at lucid dreaming, trying to bring up the image of the mysterious man from the ones around him, but there was still nothing. Only the dull ache of desire and frustration that boiled low in his gut as he looked at the pictures of someone he couldn’t have.

Sketches and portraits and watercolors of the young man littered his home. There was something of him in every room, something to remind Bruce that he _must_ be out there somewhere, even if Bruce couldn’t remember where. Bruce wanted him in everything, painted on the ceiling, carved out of marble, _anything_ just so there was more of him. He couldn’t stand it. Finally, after a night of reading over an account of his sex dream– again, commissioned off of the details he remembered, then refined to perfection– Bruce realized what he wanted.

If he couldn’t have the living man, he’d have the next best thing. A fully accurate doll.

He worked with two designers for weeks on it, making him as perfect to the dream-vision as he could. It took another month, but finally he had it, a moveable, posable doll capable of fulfilling almost every desire he had.

He shut himself up in the Manor for three days, speaking to no one, just staying home with his doll. His partners and colleagues at Wayne Enterprises worried themselves into a tizzy as they tried to keep it out of the press and still pretend like work was going smoothly. His obsession only seemed to be growing now that he had a tangible object of his affections.

Now that Bruce had the doll, the dreams started again. Sometimes they were in familiar places, sometimes they were nowhere, just two people in a void where everything was them and for them. With each dream, his young man became clearer, sometimes wearing clothes that fit in with his circus dream, usually wearing nothing, but never giving away anything that Bruce could use to identify him in real life. It was painfully aggravating.

That week, the board informed Bruce that if he did not start showing up in his capacity as president and CEO, then they would have to start looking to replace him for fear of scandal. He agreed to come in, but the long drive to and from the city only added to the time he was away from his young man. The psychic told him to keep the doll– the effigy, as she called it– of his young man close, and perhaps he would reveal his true self. Invigorated by this news, Bruce dressed his doll and decided to move to the penthouse.

He was halfway through Gotham when the sirens started up behind him, the alternating lights flashing at him to pull over. That was bold; not many cops dared to pull over a Wayne, not even for the distinguished honor of “meeting a Wayne”. Whoever it was must be new.

Bruce pulled over and leaned back in his seat, idly stroking his doll’s hand as he waited for the cop. It did occur to him that this would look strange, driving around town with a sex doll in the passenger seat, but whatever. What good was being an eccentric billionaire if he couldn’t? He was already pulling out his wallet when the cop knocked on his window.

“License and registration, please. Thinking of joining the Indy-500, Mr. Wayne?”

Bruce snorted and held up his information, lazily looking up at the cop. "Honest, officer, I wasn’t doing any more than–” His throat ran dry as he focused on the young man’s face, that face he knew all too well.

“I know, your speedometer’s broken,” the officer said, smiling. “But, then again, it’s the principle of the thing, isn’t it? If you don’t pay a speeding ticket, why should the guy without the billions pay for it? Just don’t hand the judge a Rolex this time, huh?”

Bruce blinked, trying to crawl out of his trance. “What?”

“Your Rolex.” He laughed. “When we were doing the GCPD charity drive, I came to Wayne Enterprises for donations and you dropped your Rolex in my bucket. You left before I could ask if that was your real donation.”

Bruce swallowed hard against the dryness of his throat. He remembered now. The young man talking to Alex about their childhoods, talking about how he had had to run away from the circus instead of to it, how he had laughed at the idea of being at the Wayne-sponsored Policeman’s Ball, as if he could clean up nice enough for that. Bruce had barely spared him a passing glance, noticing the uniform more than anything else as he carelessly dropped his watch into the officer’s collection bucket. Ever the bored billionaire.

The officer leaned down, his brow furrowed. “Sir, are you feeling all right?”

“What’s your name?”

The young man started. “My name? I’m Officer Grayson, sir.”

“Grayson. Your first name?”

Officer Grayson straightened. “Sir, have you been drinking tonight?”

Bruce shook his head. “No, no, it’s not that. I just...” He trailed off as the young man glanced at the passenger seat, and then looked harder.

“Is that... me?”

Bruce took a sharp breath. “Yes. Yes, it is. Only I didn’t know it was you at the time.”

Officer Grayson nodded slowly and took a step back. “Uh-huh. Well, I’ll, um. You take care of that ticket, alright? Stay within the speed limit, sir.”

Bruce leaned forward, craning his neck out the window as the young man walked back toward the cruiser. “Wait! I didn’t get your name!”

“Have a nice night, sir,” the officer called, getting into his car in a hurry. Not waiting any longer than necessary, the young man drove off, leaving Bruce alone on the side of the road with his sex doll.

“Grayson,” Bruce said, leaning back in his seat. “Officer Something Grayson.” He looked over at the doll, then down at the ticket in his hand. There, down near the bottom of it, read a name in perfectly legible writing. “Officer Dick Grayson.” Bruce patted the doll’s hand. “You have a name, love.”

Tucking the ticket away in his shirt pocket, he started the car again and headed for the penthouse. Now he had a name to go with the face. He wondered if the real Dick Grayson could measure up to the one in his dreams. He chuckled.

“Only one way to find out.”


End file.
